Hyperlocal News Roundup

by Matt on Jan 25, 2009 in Industry

newsstandWorking on a post about Big City blogging vs. Small Town blogging, but until that’s ready, here are a few hyperlocal things I’ve bookmarked in the last week or two:

The folks at outside.in have created and released a StoryMap WordPress.org Plugin. This is for bloggers who have a self-hosted Wordpress blog, not for folks using Wordpress.com hosting. I haven’t gotten around to trying it out on our blogs, but would like to do so. Need to sort out some issues with my outside.in account first (namely, need the ability to list all four of our blogs in my account).

I’ve written a couple times about EveryBlock, and notice that they just celebrated their one year birthday. That blog post I’m linking talks about how the site has grown, from covering three cities at launch up to 11 now, plus the growth in the types of data in the EveryBlock system. Very interesting site, and here’s to many more birthday celebrations in the future!

Speaking of EveryBlock, Peter Krasilovsky just wrote last week about the site’s impending switch to a “for profit strategy.” EB has been operating on grant money since its inception, but that funding will dry up this summer. If you’re not familiar with EveryBlock, the article also offers a quick overview of what it’s all about. (And you may also want to read my post about how to submit your local blog to EveryBlock.)

Another article from Peter K. last week offers a brief update on what PlaceBlogger.com has been up to recently. If you’ve visited the site lately, you know there’s an entirely new interface and user experience. I’ve been in touch recently with founder Lisa Williams, and (cough, cough) she said she’d like to write a guest post for us here on HLB. (Oh, Lisa?)

And finally, here’s an interesting bit from Mike Boland about a project called The Printed Blog. It’s a free newspaper that just launched in Chicago and San Francisco with content coming from local blogs. If that sounds intriguing to you, and you want to submit your blog for consideration, here are the details.

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January 25, 2009 | Filed Under Industry 

Comments

4 Responses to “Hyperlocal News Roundup”

  1. Lisa Williams on January 26th, 2009 9:26 am

    Hi, Matt! Hey, thanks for the nudge. I’ve already got the illustration for my post! So, let’s set up a way for me to push the content to you.

    Now’s a perfect time as the hamsters that run the servers at Placeblogger are taking an espresso break.

  2. Matt on January 30th, 2009 4:58 pm

    Very intriguing, Lisa! You have my email address, still? Drop me a line when you’re ready. :-) Or use the contact page up top here to reach me… looking forward to it!

  3. Jared on March 9th, 2009 7:23 am

    Just saw this post (better late than never, right?). Thanks for the plug on the WordPress plug-in, but more importantly, I can help you sort out your outside.in account. Hit me up at jared@outside.in with your questions.

  4. Matt on March 13th, 2009 12:16 am

    It’s pretty much sorted out, Jared – thanks. I wanted to list all of my blogs in one account, but C. told me I’d need to make separate accounts for each blog. Not the most convenient thing in the world, but it worked.

    I now have Storymaps on all four of our blogs, but we’re in a smaller town, so most of our places aren’t in your system and very few of our blog posts get picked up on the Storymap.

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